Posts tagged: environmental photography

Fresh juices and smoothies rescued from a distribution facility dumpster filled with unopened bottles of fresh juices not yet expired but possibly too close to the expiration date to go on market shelves. Confusion around “best by”, “use by” and “sell by” dates leads to a large amount of food waste. – Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Bread is one of the most wasted food items. Americans buy 3 billion loaves a year – with 750 million loaves ending up in the trash. All of the food pictured above was rescued from curbside trash outside of a market and bakery in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

As stores close and markets wind down across New York City, masses of food are cast out into the dumpsters and into the streets. Around the same time, the food rescuers or ‘freegans’ as they are known, arrive to salvage the often perfectly edible food. NYC-based photographer Aliza Eliazarov’s latest project Waste Not shines the spotlight on the issue of food waste in her city, highlighting the unsettling statistic that $165 billion of food is wasted annually in the US, while also bringing attention to a global problem.

In February 2011, artist Stuart Haygarth walked 500 miles along the southern coast of England from Gravesend to Landsend, with the object of collecting every man-made item that he came across. On his return, he categorized and color coordinated each found item before arranging them into neat compositions and photographing them. Aside from their obvious aesthetic appeal, his pictures also tell another tale: the tale of our reckless pollution of the earth, for each of these manufactured objects has been discarded and carried by the world’s oceans and seas.

A collection of different species of discarded artificial flowers that would not exist at the same flowering time in nature and should not be found in the ocean. The lotus flower reflects early connotations of beauty in China. The flowers are part of a collection recovered from various beaches over the past 3 years.

“Photography is not what we see; it’s what we make others see,” says Leeds-based photographer Mandy Barker.

In 2011, Lille-based photographer Antoine Repessé stopped throwing away his recyclable rubbish and began to store it inside his home. Over a four year period, he accumulated around 70m3 of waste that would be used to demonstrate a harrowing point in his latest project, #365 Unpacked.

We city folk are so familiar with debris this day and age that to see a pristine piece of terrain might be jarring. Photographer Jeremy Underwood’s photographs of his structures-in-the sea almost look endemic to the scene but the scene has been set, so to speak.

Espadarana Callistomma, gender unkown, still found in their natural habitat.

According to UNESCO, Ecuador has the world’s highest level of biodiversity based on its geographical size. In the Amazonian rainforest of this small South American country, more species of trees grow within one hectare (2,5 acres) than in the entire North American continent. Ecuador also boasts 460 species of amphibians, almost 9 percent of the world’s total. One third of Ecuador’s amphibian species are endangered.—Peter Lipton

Amsterdam-based photographer Peter Lipton‘s recent project is based around a research and conservation program at the Catholic University of Quito that was created in 2005 to address the growing number of endangered amphibians due to the country’s increases in logging, oil exploration, agriculture and climate change. Named ‘Balsa de los sapos’—Spanish for ‘Life raft of the frogs’—the program aims to collect, reproduce, and return endangered amphibians to their natural habitat. Lipton creates an exquisite showcase of these unique creatures, many of which are sadly the last known specimens.

Plastic Pacific is a series by Austrailia-based photographer Kim Preston exploring the devastating impact of plastics accumulation in oceans around the globe. Inspired to educate viewers, she addresses the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a mass of plastic waste currently floating in the North Pacific. Alluding to the threats this problem brings, Preston cleverly transforms everyday household objects into the sea creatures likely to be affected.

With no money coming in and gas prices at an all-time high, I took off on a cross-country road trip. I didn’t have a set plan of where to go or what to shoot; I just knew that I wanted to travel and take photos before I returned to New York to start a new chapter in my career.

It was a fantastic experience. I tried to shoot a portrait every day, and I ultimately shot about 70 portraits of people I met along the way. These images are of whoever I came across: a biker at a rest stop in California, a priest at a church in New Mexico, prisoners on work release in Texas, squatters at Slab City, a stripper in Portland, a fly fisherman in Montana and many more.—Roger Kisby